BorrowdaleIn the Lakeland District on the English/Scottish border, about four or five miles from Ambleside on the Hawkshead road is a T-junction. Turn right and the road ascends the shoulder of a small water-cut valley, finally reaching it’s destination at the Drunken Duck public house from whence a choice of routes beyond this story can be found.
If you had been on this road one autumn morning some forty years ago, you would have found an old Land Rover carelessly parked or, to some, abandoned by the roadside. The occupants stood nearby looking over the wall, down into the shallow valley. Small clumps of trees were dotted here and there, and rough pasture grass filled the spaces between. At the top of the valley stood a small wood, which was sheltering two red deer hinds. The piece of ground holding the attention of the occupants of the Land Rover, however, was a field of kale, which some enterprising or optimistic farmer had planted. On the down slope of the valley facing, grazed two small ponies and a few young bullocks. Bought by adoring parents for their demanding offspring, these ponies had a happy life. Gently ridden at the weekend by two small children, they made merry for the rest of the week, and their girth showed the effect.
“It’s coming again,” said Jack, “just under that big oak tree.”
I looked and sure enough there was the fox girt cub.
“See if t’ bugger does the same route.”
Sure enough, the fox went into the kale field and dodged about for a few minutes before emerging into the field where the ponies were. The fox climbed the slope and disappeared over the brow of the hill into the caravan site beyond. After traversing the caravan site it emerged at the bottom of our valley ready to repeat the circuit again. This was the third time we had seen it do this and the following hounds kept suffering check after check as they struggled to hold the line. The fox emerged from the kale field and the two ponies looked at it suspiciously, their flanks heaving from the last time the hounds had passed by. Jack smiled.
“Never been worked so hard,” he grinned.
The hounds, some minutes behind, arrived in the kale field and suffered yet another check. One older and wiser hound followed the boundary of the field, and it’s bark indicated he had found the place where the fox had come out of the kale. The ponies and cattle had another gallop round the field as hounds searched for the line tainted by the activity of the field’s occupants, careering madly about, disturbed by the hounds. This went on some four times until the frustrated huntsman “blew off” and we went home.
What follows are excerpts from newspapers of the period, showing more ruses used by Lakeland foxes to avoid hounds. Some worked; others didn’t.
Ullswater Foxhounds
On the open slopes of the fell, the fox was hard pressed for a means of escape and tried hard to lose his pursuers by dodging among flocks of newly dipped sheep. Three times this ruse failed. Reynard then took to the water in Whinhow Beck.
[Hounds] followed the same line into Pasture Beck and went to the sheep pens, at which point the fox was viewed. However, they struggled in the sheep foil.
The fox made it to the thick bracken beds where they could do no more—a disappointing end to a hunt which had lasted for more than two hours.
On Wednesday, huntsman Wear of the Ullswater had to scratch his head without being able to solve the puzzle of why hounds could not hunt a Naddle Forest fox which disdainfully walked along the shores of Haweswater near the new hotel with hounds completely unable to hunt it. Was it a vixen with the reputed ability to withhold scent, or was the explanation linked up with the atmospheric factors governing scent—that inexplicable thing which is as inexplicable today as it ever was?
Coniston
Wednesday provided a gruelling day from Red Bank. A stout fox from White Ghyll had to be left in a hole after a big circle, while another from Blakerigg went straight away through Bowfell and Scafell to Wasdale Head—the longest run of the season. Anthony Chapman stopped the hounds in Wasdale and got home at 10:00 p.m.!
Lunesdale
Monday’s joint meet with The Oxenholme Hunt at Barrowfield near Kendal provided a fox which was wise enough to make for the dry limestone of Whitbarrow Scar and ran them off.
[There isn’t much limestone in the Lake District, but certain parts of it have some. Scent was always more variable when a fox ran onto the limestone areas.]
Sedbergh Foxhounds
On hounds getting fairly on the track, he went round by the top of Bramrigg, crossing Hareshaw into Bowderdale, where he was driven right up Randy Ghyll, through the Saddle to Yarlside Crag, bringing their game round by Ben End, through the Screes, crossing Cautley home. Here several dalesmen in the neighbourhood, hearing the magnificent music of the hounds, were anxious to join in the fray, the pack going in full cry and viewing their quarry. About this point, he had evidentially given himself a wash, as hounds were given a check, but in a few moments the hounds Delicate and Tippler again struck the scent, encouraging the others, and the whole pack were soon on their way to Cautley Crag.
Posted September 8, 2011
See more Ron Black stories of Lakeland hunting on his website.
Click any photo to start a slideshow.
